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Blurb
Sassy Abigail Andrews is a phlebotomist who has terminal leukemia. The good news is that her Dr. Jakob Farkas might be able to heal her, since he claims to be a vampire. But there's one small hitch, tired of his lonely existence, Farkas has not fed in over 100 years and needs to be brought back to health before he can help Abigail, with whom he has fallen in love.
Abigail doesn't believe the crazy doctor's story, but she doesn't have much else going on at the moment besides dying. So she leaves her boring life behind in order to join Jakob Farkas on his travels around the world in search of a mystical cure.
As they await the arrival of the Spring Equinox in the legendary caves in Lascaux France, Abigail wonders if she can overcome the greatest obstacle to her cure: her mortality.
Doctor Farkas
By J.T. Therrien
It will have blood, they say; blood will have blood.
Shakespeare, Macbeth
"I'm so sorry." Dr. Farkas' voice dripped with sympathy and compassion. He slid my latest CBC report across the desk, and I leaned forward to read it, unwilling to touch the piece of paper and acknowledge its reality. My white blood cells were off the charts. Add to that my constant tiredness and bloating . . . . Any way you spelled it, I had leukemia.
I clenched my hands into tight fists. I wanted to hit something. Life was so unfair. Just when I seemed to have made a connection with someone—this sensitive, handsome, dark-eyed Dr. Someone sitting across the desk from me—looking sweet and vulnerable, he revealed that I'd reached the end of my life.
Falling snowflakes—they had tickled my nose on the way over to the office—curtained off the outside world and created the illusion of inhabiting our own secret world, the doctor and I. It was much like the real world, except for the absence of gravity. I was in free-fall: my only thought; in twenty-eight years of living on Earth I hadn't made any more of an impact on the world than those weightless flakes bouncing off the windowpane.
I turned my attention back to the office walls, tastefully decorated with framed medical degrees: Oxford, Toronto, and UCLA Medical. Dr. Farkas—"It's pronounced Farkash," his secretary corrected me when I first started seeing the doctor two weeks ago—was a world traveler, like I'd always wanted to be. Someone who could say, I've seen the sun rise in the Arabian Desert; I've walked through Columbian rain forests.
Numb—and dumb—I shook my head and soaked up my tears with a tissue plucked from a handy box on his desk.
The doctor remained silent for so long that I almost apologized before catching myself. I would not apologize to anyone for dying and feeling sorry for myself.
I tucked a stray lock back behind my ear. I was way overdue for a cut. I'd get it cut next week, after I put this hellish string of night shifts behind me. Then again, maybe I wouldn't. What would be the point now? I didn't believe in leaving behind a beautiful corpse.
I began a quick prayer to St. Januarius, the patron saint of blood banks, as I mustered up the courage to face my limited options.
"Ms. Andrews. Abigail, if I may. I wish I could help you, but . . . . "
His voice startled me in mid-prayer.
"But you don't work miracles." I finished his sentence instead of my prayer. You could say that I had more than a passing interest in blood-borne diseases. As a phlebotomist, I made my living drawing blood samples for oncologists, doctors like him. I giggled thinking that if I'd been a lumberjack, a falling tree would've crushed the life out of me. As a school crossing guard, I probably would've ended up beneath the wheels of a bus. I could handle my sucky fate, just not the irony that accompanied it.
Dr. Farkas cleared his throat. "Actually, I was going to say that I don't want to get your hopes up, but there's something I'd like to research further."
I groaned. "Not more blood tests?"
"No. We're done with all that. But I want to look again at your platelets in light of some new research I recently read."
"Really? Don't yank my chain me, Doc," I replied.
"I'm not making any promises. But we should meet again."
I'd Googled him after my family doctor's referral, so I knew a few things about Dr. Farkas. He was a thirty-six year old oncologist. And single. And maybe interested? But how interested could a doctor be in a dying patient?
"Really," he reassured me, smiling at my skepticism.
I focused on his mouth instead of paying attention to his words. I should've listened more carefully.
* * *
Here are some fun facts about blood: Eight million blood cells die every second, and eight million cells are created in that time. There are about ten pints of blood in an adult human body. A newborn has one cup of blood. Most white blood cells live up to three days. Your average-sized rat has about twenty-five milliliters of blood.